San Diego State wore its home whites in its exhibition opener against Cal State San Marcos, an NAIA team in its second year of existence. It just looked like the Aztecs were wearing orange.

They were that rusty.

Coach Steve Fisher opted for an exhibition with fans and cheerleaders in Viejas Arena over a closed-door scrimmage against a Division I opponent because, sage intuition told him, his roster of six newcomers needed exposure under the lights – needed to unjangle some nerves, ungrease some palms. The grizzled vet sensed right.

No. 20 SDSU won 67-46 but this was a sloppy and at times ugly game, with 11 Aztecs turnovers in each half, a 5-of-19 effort on three-pointers, 12 offensive rebounds by an undersized opponent and (yes) a 26-26 halftime scoreline.

“This is why we did it,” Fisher said. “We turned the ball over carelessly too many times. They know it, but that’s part of playing in front of people, trying to play too fast, trying to do too much in traffic.”

Pity UC San Diego. It plays here Monday in SDSU’s second and final exhibition, and you figure the Div. II Tritons aren’t getting the 22-turnover effort.

Fisher used 14 players, none more than 24 minutes, and 11 scored in a game that technically was the first soldout exhibition in school history (about 8,000 showed up). Chase Tapley led with 13 points, and fellow senior DeShawn Stephens had 10. Jamaal Franklin had seven points, seven rebounds, four assists and two steals.

CSU San Marcos coach Jim Saia agreed to start the game in a zone defense to give the Aztecs some live looks against a 2-3 ahead of their Nov. 9 opener against Syracuse, which last played man-to-man during the Truman administration. The rotations were slightly different, and the Cougars don’t go 6-foot-10, 6-10, 6-8 across the back line and 6-6 and 6-4 across the top.

But they might as well have.

The Aztecs opened a 6-0 lead thanks to a did-he-just-do-that tip dunk by Franklin off a Tapley miss, then turned it over on 10 of their next 14 possessions. When Jacob Ranger made a three with 3:21 left in the half, it was 21-19, Cougs.

“We were trying too hard,” Fisher said. “At the other end, the same thing applied. They did a great job of making us chase them from side to side, and we got too anxious. We gave them angles to get where they wanted to go and they took advantage of it. So we’ll be able to show that from the tape.”

Sophomore transfer Dwayne Polee II was probably the player of the game – not for his six points and four rebounds in 13 minutes but for what he did at halftime. Polee, Fisher said, noted that the wings on the San Marcos zone were playing inordinately wide and high, and suggested screening them while running a guy across the baseline.

“I’m glad we listened,” Fisher said.

The adjustment spawned a 17-5 run to open the second half, and Saia junked the zone.

“We went man,” Saia said, “and everything went down the drain.”

Soon 6-8 freshman Winston Shepard was running the point against 6-3 Danny Redmon, the lead swelled into the 20s and the walk-ons were at the scorer’s table. When these teams met a year ago, also in an exhibition, SDSU won by 15.

“We played a lot of guys, saw a lot of things I liked and the tape will give us a lot to work on,” Fisher said. “If you want to say from a strategic teaching standpoint, everything involved was really good for us with the way it turned out.”

3 more games on TV

Fox Sports San Diego picked up SDSU’s remaining three home games that weren’t televised: Nov. 11 against San Diego Christian (7:30 p.m.), Nov. 21 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff (7:30) and Dec. 18 against Point Loma Nazarene (7). That leaves Nov. 17 at Missouri State as the only regular-season game not televised, which is out of SDSU’s control since it’s on the road and part of the Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge.

It also means it will be near impossible for most Aztecs fans to see all the games. Some are on Fox Sports SD, which Time Warner subscribers don’t get. And 10 are on the new Time Warner Cable SportsNet, which Cox cable doesn’t carry.

Notes

The starting five: Xavier Thames, Tapley, Franklin, J.J. O’Brien and Stephens. Ten players got double-digit minutes, but returning point guard LaBradford Franklin wasn’t one of them. He played four minutes … Fisher used a variety of lineups, including one with five guards and another with three freshmen and a sophomore … The Aztecs made 9 of 10 shots to open the second half and finished the half with an impressive 13 assists on 16 baskets. They shot 66.7 percent in the half and outscored San Marcos 41-20 … The 5-of-19 effort behind the arc was a more respectable 5-of-13 (38.5 percent) after misfiring on their first six attempts.